Everything is Fine

I thought that the worst thing that would ever happen in my life happened the day the royal capital was destroyed, when the towers burned and the Sentinels fell silent. I remember seeing tears slip down my mother’s cheeks as she stared, wide-eyed, at the news feed. Her grandparents had survived the Great Plague that had nearly killed off our entire race, the scramble to hold on to our technology in the face of such devastation, and the war waged to fill the power vacuum created by such a tremendous loss of life.

It was the royal family that had saved us then, carved out a space of peace and safety for civilization to begin to flourish once more. And now it was all collapsing under the weight of a terrorist mob. It was a horrifying, terrifying sight. But it wasn’t the worst thing. It wasn’t even close.

The worst thing happened the next day, when everyone carried on as normal, like nothing had happened. There were even some who said the news footage must have been fake. Nothing could take down the Sentinels. No one could destroy the capital. So, it can’t have been true. Surely if insurrectionists had overthrown the monarchy, there would be chaos in the streets, riots, babies being roasted like suckling pigs, that sort of thing. It would be obvious.

Would it though?

Evil doesn’t always come holding a big flashing sign saying, “Hello, I’m Evil.” Often it’s much more insidious, a whisper in a vulnerable moment, a slight nudge to a boat adrift.

Soon after the insurrection that wasn’t, new laws started being passed. At first, they were things outside of the average person’s awareness. Trade restrictions. Reallocation of government resources. New senate committees formed. New legislation passed quickly and quietly.

“You see?” people said. “Everything is fine. Look at how efficient the government has become.”

Then the laws started targeting the way everyday people lived their lives. First it was little things, things people grumbled about, but didn’t really take seriously. Internet search restrictions. Increased fees for access to databases. Decreased funding for things like public parks and homeless shelters. Then, they moved on to bigger things. Shutting down arts venues. Preventing the reprinting of certain kinds of books. Making previously public government records private.

Most telling of all, or at least, it should have been, they began separating us, segregating us. And they did it all neatly and cleanly with labels and categories.

“Oh, you identify as this and this and this! Well then, I’m sure you’d be much happier if you let us relocate you over here. You’d have so much in common with them! And we all know how hard it is to be with people who don’t understand you, don’t we? It must feel so horribly lonely for you where you are, you poor dear. Now, just sign here and here, and we’ll handle the rest. No expense spared! Lovely. Thank you for your cooperation.”

In just a couple of decades, we’d all been sorted into neat little ethnic zones, further delineated into religious enclaves. All to help us “feel free to be our most authentic selves among people who knew exactly what it was like to be us.”

Next came the dress codes, in the name of equality. And the gender limitations, in the name of equality. And the marriage restrictions, in the name of equality. We now live in a world with only two genders and marriages only recognized between “biologically procreative pairings.” I’ve been forced to wear pastels and frills and lace and skirts for decades because of one little letter in one little box on the record of my birth.

With all of that going on, you may be wondering why I said that the worst thing that ever happened in my life happened the day after the Invisible Insurrection. But it’s true. Us doing nothing that day and the day after that and the day after that has led us to this—a slow death, like being strangled by creeping vines.

And do you know what? Every day the skies are blue and the birds start singing at dawn and people say, “You see? Everything is fine.”

Is it?

In the next three months, the government is planning to roll out a system of curfews and military neighborhood patrols. “For public safety.”

People are looking at the news and nodding their heads and saying, “Oh, if it’s for public safety then I’m all for it. There are so many dangerous people out there. You know the kind I mean. Them. Over there. They’re not like us at all and they’re always trying to pretend that they are.”

There aren’t many of us left who remember the day the royal capital fell. We’re all old now, impossibly old. When I saw the towers burn. I never thought I’d live to be this old. Or this tired. But there is one advantage that has come with age. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care if they catch me and spirit me away to some secret torture chamber. I don’t care if I meet with a sudden, deadly “accident” on my way to my local grocery dispensary.

I’m going to do what I should have done long ago, me and some of the others who remember. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe we won’t be able to change anything. Maybe we’ll simply disappear like the last sparks of a dying fire. But maybe we won’t. There’s no telling.

So I’m leaving this message, and I’m hiding it in one of the few pieces of gender-class-religion-age-ethnicity appropriate jewelry I own. I suppose it’s fitting that this locket is shaped like a heart because that’s what I’m leaving here in this note—my heart, my hopes, my fears.

Did you know that lockets used to be used to hold mementos of loved ones? Pictures, locks of hair, pressed flowers, not tracking devices or identity registrations. Do they have pressed flowers where you are now? You, who are reading this note. I hope they do. I hope that wherever you are, whenever you are, this chapter of history I’m living through is long over.

But if not… If the Sentinels are still silent, and the world is still wrong, you know what you need to do, don’t you? Because the worst thing isn’t when tragedy strikes, when calamity makes it feel like the sky has come crashing down. It’s after that. It’s when people look at the hurt, the pain, the scorched earth and blasted ruins, and then turn away and say…

“Everything is fine.”